Wheel rim blanks for automotive and other uses have been manufactured in the past by first coiling and then welding sheet stock, the welds occurring along axial joint lines at contiguous end portions of the coiled blanks. Prior art manufacturing apparatus, however, has involved extensive material handling and transfer and even manual loading operations. Coiled rim blanks have been transferred, stored, re-oriented for introduction to welding apparatus, transferred, stored and once again re-oriented for introduction to various machining operations. Completely automated apparatus for the manufacture of wheel rim blanks in a continuous and high speed sequence of operations has not been heretofore available, one major difficulty being the necessary precise blank orientation for introduction to certain of the operations.